


A Basic Introduction to Aerodynamics

by CopperCaravan



Series: Flight [1]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Developing Friendships, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, so slow it doesn't happen for over a decade
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2019-08-14 07:47:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16488554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: The four forces of aerodynamics are weight (the thing that holds you down), lift (the thing that lets you get up), drag (the thing that holds you back), and thrust (the thing that moves you forward).After the raid on Mindoir, Shepard goes to the KAV Alliance Flight Academy to realize her dream of being a space pilot. She makes friends with, arguably, the un-friendliest boy in the school.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, uh, after over two years, here's this.

“Um. Hi.”

Jeff lets out an annoyed breath, and he isn’t subtle about it. He’s got at least two more hours of work to get done tonight and he’s been bent over this damn library table for so long that his back feels like it’s gonna break in half. What he doesn’t need right now is some girl asking him to help her with a math problem or to share his feelings or if he wants to go out Friday night (that was a trick both times anyway).

But when the huff and the silence don’t get his message across, he looks up. “What?”

She sort of jerks back a little, and he almost feels kinda bad because she doesn’t _look_ like she came over just to irritate him or whatever but it’s not like he yelled at her or anything. “What is it?” he says again, only a little less sharply.

She shuffles from one foot to the other and looks at her hands, wrapped white-knuckle tight around the spine of _A Basic Introduction to Aerodynamics_. “I—Could I, um...” She swallows and tilts her head toward his table, covered from one end to the other in textbooks and notebooks and diagrams. “Could I join you?”

“Why?”

She blanks, her mouth opening, closing, and opening again all in silence; she reminds him of a fish. A brunette fish. “Oh. Sorry, I just—I just thought that, uh...”

Jesus Christ, by the time she gets anything out, the entire spring term’s gonna be over. “Yeah, sure.” He thumps the back of the seat next to him, attention having already returned to his books. And he’s only _kind of_ wondering if she’s actually gonna sit down now—he’s not real sure he wants her to, but so long as she’s quiet, he figures he can tolerate it.

A little to his surprise, the suspense doesn’t hold long. As she drops her bag (loudly) onto the table, the AC unit shoots out an unreasonably cold burst of air through the vent above them and he grits his teeth. Of _course_ his jacket’s all the way back in his dorm. The chill bumps spread up his arms and there’s something about it—the cold, he supposes—that makes him think of his dad bent over their stove making cobbler for Christmas dinner, the way the house was all warm and his mom would wrap him up in blankets and make him hot cider. The smell of it.

“I’m Shepard,” she says, a little breathless. “Fera Shepard.”

_Shepard._ Something about that name rings familiar but he can’t quite think of what it is. “Jeff Moreau,” he says back, without looking at her and without accepting her somewhat awkwardly offered handshake.

After a pause—her hand still held in the air between them—she settles into the chair and it scrapes along the floor. The resulting screech would have all eyes on them if there were any people around. It grates on him but he still doesn’t look up from his book. _Sky Seeker: A Biography of Valentina Tereshkova_ ain’t gonna read itself.

Beside him, Shepard opens one of her books, the cover hitting the table with a little _plop._ Seems that he’s spent the whole year working his ass off in solitude and quiet only to saddle himself with the girl who apparently can’t even open a book without making an excessive amount of racket.

They read in silence for a couple minutes—thank god—and he’s almost made it to the end of his chapter when he sees her shift a little out of the corner of his eye.

“So...”

He squints, tries to focus harder on what he’s reading. “So?”

She looks at her lap, wrings her hands for a second. “Where are you from?”

Jesus. “Uh, look,” he starts, mostly failing at his genuine attempt to tone down his attitude so she doesn’t make that _you-kicked-a-dog_ face again. “I’ve got an exam tomorrow and I really... I mean you’re nice and all, I guess? Probably? But I’m trying to study, so...”

Her face turns as red as a warning light. Hell, he’s impressed she’s not suffering some weird organ failure considering how much blood’s just rushed to her head. “Right,” she says quickly, jerking her face in the opposite direction. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, uh, don’t worry about it.”

He finishes his chapter in the (even more awkward) silence and when he shuts the book, he spares her a glance. She’s got one hand curling her hair around her fingers—tangling, more like—and the other pressed against her lips so she can bite her nails. In all the time they’ve been sitting here, she’s turned the pages of her book maybe twice, but she’s sure staring at it hard.

_History of Drive Core Engineering_ is waiting for him to suck it up and plough through two more chapters, but...

He clears his throat and tips his head toward her book. “So, uh, what’s that?” He asks, even already knowing.

“Hm? Oh.” She drops her thumb, nail chewed all to hell, and checks the front cover of her book. _So she wasn’t even really reading._ “It’s _A Basic Introduction to Aerodynamics._ ” Underneath it sits _Flight Deck Maintenance._

He shakes his head. “You picked up the wrong books. They only offer those in the fall semester.”

“I know,” she says, a bit too brightly. “I missed last term, so I’ve gotta catch up. It was part of the deal. Otherwise they wanted me to start next year.”

Then it hits him. _Shepard._ Of course. She’s that Mindoir kid—he’d heard about Mindoir this past summer; hell his dad had practically freaked out for the two and a half months leading up to the start of the term. “Batarian raiders” this and “Four-eyed bastards” that. Sure, he gets it—they heard bad shit about Mindoir, saw some nasty footage, but it didn’t really seem like such a big deal. Not personally, anyway. Mindoir was literally worlds away. But his mom had sent him a couple emails back in September, asking if “that poor child from Mindoir” had shown up yet and telling him that “you’d better behave yourself, Jeff. Be nice.”

He looks at her chewed up fingernails again. _Shit._

He doesn’t really know what to say—probably better not to say anything. He just waves his hand dismissively toward her book. “Well, lucky you that whole course list is practically a joke. ‘Don’t spill soda on the consoles, Mr. Moreau!’” he says, raising his voice to a screechy imitation of the Interfaces Professor. “‘That equipment is worth more than your tuition, young man!’”

Shepard laughs—loudly—and the librarian, Mrs. Becker, _shushes_ them from the front desk all the way across the room. But he at least feels like less of an ass now.

“So that mean you’re doing this term’s classes too?”

She nods, purses her lips. “It’s not so bad though; they lightened last term’s workload for me since it’s all just basic stuff. Just a couple papers each and I think I’ve gotta do some kinda demonstration about—”

“Emergency Protocol. Yeah.”

“Yeah,” she repeats, the conversation trailing off awkwardly. She looks at her hands again before curling them up in her lap, hiding her mangled nails from view, and when she looks back up, they both pretend he didn’t see.

“I can help you out, if you want. Since I already took all those.” He’s not real sure why he says it, but it’s out there before he has a chance to think better of it.

“Thanks,” she says, but she’s looking about as far away from him as she can manage without breaking her neck.

He’s pretty much spent his time here avoiding pointless conversations, so he hasn’t realized—‘til right now, anyway—how bad he apparently is at having them. Hell, he seemed to be doing better when he _wasn’t_ trying to be nice.

She doesn’t say anything else for a few minutes, so he opens his engineering book and starts reading through chapter three. After a couple more minutes of silence, he notices her turning the pages of her own textbook more regularly too.

One more chapter of engineering, two chapters of military history, and three review sheets later, Mrs. Becker taps the edge of their table. He doesn’t know how anybody can grow up _wanting_ to sit in a room full of books and jackass teenagers, but looking at Mrs. Becker, you can’t really picture her doing anything else. She just _looks_ like a librarian. “You kids are gonna have to clear out,” she says. “We’re closing.”

For once, he doesn’t argue—he’d done a lot of that last semester, when he was trying to avoid being in his dorm room as much as possible. He and Shepard pack up their stuff and had toward the door. Even if the straps of his bag—so heavy with all his textbooks—weren’t digging painfully into his shoulders, it’d still take him a while. Shepard just walks right off without even looking back at him shambling along behind her and he reminds himself, angrily, that he hadn’t expected anything different.

She makes it halfway to the door before she turns her head and stops, like she must’ve forgotten something. And then she turns all the way around and looks right at him. “Are you coming?”

Another first today: he doesn’t answer because he doesn’t know what to say.

At first, he’s annoyed. _Yes, I’m coming,_ he wants to say. _Don’t you fucking see me limping along back here?_ But it only takes a second for him to realize that stupid, innocent look on her face is actually grade-A fucking genuine ignorance. She doesn’t know he’s “the crippled guy.” And it’s kinda satisfying because for the first time since he got here, it’s not about someone being “nice,” about opening doors for him or trying to make excuses for him or keeping a five foot cushion of space around him or throwing a look of pity over their shoulder at him as they run off to play ball. For the first time since he got here, it’s not about Brittle Fucking Bones.

But then his stomach sinks because now he’s gotta fucking _talk_ about it and that’s real close to being just as shitty.

“Yeah,” he says, resuming his walk. “I’m coming.”

She waits for a second, seems to register that he’s walking _awfully_ slow, and then she sets off, walking right back to him and matching his pace with a shrug.

He doesn’t believe—not for one second—that it’s gonna be that easy. And he’s right.

“So, did you get injured or...?”

“I’ve got VS,” he says, eyes on the door and hoping his tone gets across that _no, I don’t wanna talk about it._ Apparently, it doesn’t.

“I don’t know what that is,” she admits.

He doesn’t say anything ‘til they reach the door and he makes a point of opening it himself, just so she doesn’t get any ideas. “Brittle bone disease. Pretty self-explanatory. And it sucks.”

“Oh,” she says. “Why don’t you have one of those mobility mechs? Don’t they follow you around and help with stuff?”

It’s not the most irritating question he gets; it’s actually one of the more mundane ones. But still, it irks him something terrible and he can’t stop himself from bristling. "Yeah and why don’t you have some kinda therapist following you around, then? ‘How are things going?’ ‘Does the Intergalactic Policy class remind you of Batarian Slavers?’ ‘Do you wanna talk about your feelings?’” It’s a low blow and he knows it and he knows he should regret it, but there’s no taking it back and he doesn’t apologize, even after they make it half way to the dorm buildings and she hasn’t said another word.

It’s starting to get at him by then, in the kind of way that makes him anxious and sweaty, and he’s thinking maybe he ought to work himself up to at least some crappy version of “Sorry; I’m an ass sometimes,” when she coughs and turns her face away and says “Sorry. I guess it gets frustrating, having to deal with people asking that kinda stuff all the time. I won’t—I mean we don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want.”

He turns his face away too, watches the admin buildings pass by at the pace he’s so used to, and says “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

Another few minutes of silence, of not looking at each other but at least not looking pointedly away from each other either. They’re in front of the dorms now and even though they both stop walking at the same time, they also keep looking straight ahead.

“I kinda figured you knew,” she says. “When you offered to help me with my coursework.”

That explains it then. And if Jeff gets anything, he gets not wanting people’s pity, not wanting people to pretend to be interested in you just because they feel obligated to. _Be nice,_ his mom had said. Well, that sure shows her, doesn’t it?

“I didn’t think anybody knew but the faculty,” she continues, staring up at the A Dorm. He wonders if that’s the building she lives in—with the honors kids, the kids who come from money. Kinda doubts it, unless her family had all their colony-farm money stashed away in a bank on Earth.

He just shrugs. “I don’t think anybody else knows,” he says. “I only know ‘cause my mom works on Arcturus and when she found out they were sponsoring somebody from—well, you, she kept bugging me about it. Told me to behave myself and shit.”

“Oh.”

Damn. He’d kinda figured telling her that would make her... feel better? Something. He gets not wanting a bunch of strangers to know your business. Hell, if he could get away with hiding VS, he’d be all over it.

“You don’t have to hang out with me just because your mom says so, you know.”

He snorts at that. “Of course I fucking don’t.” And weirdly enough, _that_ makes her laugh a little. “You’re a little weird.” And she laughs some more, holds her books to her stomach and doubles over, laughing at him like he’s joking. Doesn’t disprove his assessment at all.

“Ok,” he says, rolling his eyes at her when she finally comes up for air. “I’m going inside. I’ll, uh, see you around, I guess?”

“Yeah, ok.”

...

The next day, Shepard barely manages to get to class on time.

She’s been trying not to take the sedatives her doctor gave her. They make her feel weird, like she’s not really real, not really solid. And they don’t really help her sleep either—they just stop her from being able to wake up when the dreams get bad.

It’s exhausting this way, yeah, but she can handle tired. What she can’t handle is being trapped in her own head, watching Mindoir burn all over again. And again. And again. The dreams aren’t even always right—sometimes they’re cruel, more loud and bloody than it even really was, and that scares the hell out of her. But sometimes they’re not as bad, and that’s worse, because she wakes up feeling less scared, less sad, less angry, and a hell of a lot more guilty.

It doesn’t help that she’s still getting used to this place—to the campus and the people and the quiet of having a private room all to herself and her thrashing sleep.

She covers a wide yawn as she slides into the seat next to Jeff and wipes a couple of resulting tears from the corner of her eye. Her book’s not even on her desk before she’s yawning again.

Jeff leans over in his desk and nudges her arm. “What the hell are you doing here?”

She takes in his expression and for one horrifying second she’s certain he’s angry with her and she’s trying to figure out what she possibly could’ve done wrong between here and the door. Or maybe it was last night; maybe he’s still upset because she—and then she realizes that it isn’t anger. It’s confusion.

Apparently “grumpy” is just part of all the faces he makes.

“Well nobody was sitting here,” she says, covering yet another yawn. “I can move if you—”

“No,” he says, gesturing to his desk and looking at her like she’s stupid. “What are you doing _here_? Don’t you have a class to go to?”

It’s a little more satisfying than it probably should be for her to meet his _are-you-stupid_ look with one of her own. “Jeff. This _is_ my class. I’ve been sitting in the back row all week.”

He straightens up and narrows his eyes at her.

“You didn’t even know I was in here?” Then she laughs because _wow._ “How self-absorbed _are_ you? There are only like seventeen people in this class! Oh my god!” She tries to be a little quieter when a couple other students look her way, but she can’t quite manage it. “Wow, you are _really_ just...”

Jeff rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Shut up.”

Professor Adams hits the top of Jeff’s desk with a pen and looks at the two of them over his glasses. “Mr. Moreau, if you and Miss Shepard don’t mind, I’d like to start class now.”

“Sure thing,” he says. “Go ahead.” And Shepard has to cover her mouth with her hands to stifle the laughter and whimper out a muffled apology when the professor turns his angry gaze on her.

She doesn’t even make it through the review of the earliest kites before she’s slumped in her seat, asleep. She wakes up to Jeff bumping her arm.

At Tito Burattini, she wakes herself up as soon as her face hits her desk. Someone giggles.

When they get to the Wright Brothers, Jeff kicks her ankle and she wakes up to Professor Adams staring at her over the tops of his glasses.

And at the end of class, when everyone starts packing up their books, she doesn’t bother. Adams waves her toward his desk and says “Shepard, we need to have a talk.”

Her stomach does an anxious little flip.

She’d promised them she could handle this—practically _begged_ them to let her in as soon as possible because she couldn’t bear sitting around doing nothing anymore. And she can’t go back to that now, but if she keeps going like this...

“I’m so sorry, sir,” she begins, once the room’s cleared out. “I didn’t mean to—”

Adams holds up his hand, motions for her to stop. “Shepard, I’m willing to give you a little slack considering the circumstances, but I can’t have you dropping off in the middle of class like this. If you can’t manage it—”

“I can, sir! I promise! I’m just...” She weighs her options.

Everyone’s always watching her now, waiting for her to freak out or fuck up. Everything she says is going to be stacked into one pile or the other: “ok” or “not ok.” _I’m on medication. I’m not taking my medication. I’m having trouble sleeping. I just need more time to adjust._ All of it leaning toward “not ok.”

“I was at the library last night—later than I’d thought. It won’t happen again, sir. And I don’t want you giving me any slack.”

He regards her for a moment. It’s not just everything she says, it’s everything she _does—_ every expression on her face, every twitch, every misstep, everything—it all goes into one pile or the other and until she’s convinced them that she can handle this, she can’t afford to be anything but “ok.” So she keeps her face impassive and after what feels like hours, Adams nods. “I’m docking five points from your attendance for sleeping in class.”

“Yes sir.”

“Then you’re dismissed.”

She turns and gathers up her bag, slings it over her shoulder, and walks out, careful to keep her head up. She doesn’t even breathe until she’s out the door and before she really has a chance to do even that, Jeff’s thumping her lightly on the arm.

The color drains from her face. “You were listening.”

“Not my fault,” he says with a shrug. “I’m a slow walker.”

She doesn’t answer, just adjusts the weight of her bag on her shoulder and walks past him, a little mad and a little embarrassed. Not enough that she walks too quickly for him to catch up though, and he _does_ make a point of catching up.

“So the library closes at ten and I mean, sure, I get why Adams is pretending to believe you—” She ignores that. Pointedly. “—but it was _such_ an obvious lie, it makes me wonder what you were making a point of not telling him.”

Outside a classroom door, she pauses, shuts her eyes and takes a breath. _Everything is fine._ “You caught me,” she says, looking him right in the eye. “The truth is I’m undercover.”

The silence settles in for a second before Jeff grins and rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Ok. Sure.”

“No, really,” she says, leaning in close and whispering to him. “I’m here to investigate a scandal for the Alliance and Adams was getting suspicious. Had to throw him off my trail.”

“Uh-huh.” Jeff takes a step back, away from her, and holds up his hands. _Personal space_ , she reminds herself. _Stay out of people’s personal space_.

He follows her into the classroom and when she slumps into the desk next to his, he pauses and looks toward the back of the room, clearly wondering if she’s been lurking in the back row of all his classes.

She meets his sceptical stare with as innocent a look as she can manage without bursting into laughter. He may not think she’s funny, but that’s just because he’s wrong.

“Try to not sleep through this one, Detective. I got more important things to do than wake you up.”

She only smirks. “Noted.”

...

To Jeff’s surprise, and Shepard’s consequential amusement, they apparently share every class on Fridays— _so on Mondays and Wednesdays too,_ he realizes. At first, he’s not quite sold on the idea.

What amuses her so much is that he hadn’t noticed her at all, but he doesn’t see how that’s so remarkable considering that she’d been hiding in the back row and hadn’t said a word all week. What amuses _him,_ though, is that she’s so goddamn chipper. You wouldn’t think somebody would be so... perky, all things considered. And it’s weird, sure—it’s like walking around with a peppy little chipmunk and, weirder than every weird thing so far, he finds he doesn’t really mind it.

He doesn’t _get_ it—doesn’t get why she’s so damn happy or why she insists on shuffling across campus with him or why she’d walked up to him in the library and instigated what she has clearly already decided is friendship—but here they are, of all places, standing outside his room.

“So, uh, yeah. Château Jeff,” he says, opening the door. “And, uh, I think my roommate’s name is Danny or something? Wherever he is... I dunno, just don’t touch his stuff.”

She only smiles and waltzes right in like she owns the place. “It’s nice,” she says.

He looks around and snorts—laundry all over the place, stacks of books and papers and unwashed dishes all the way back from Monday. “Yeah, well, don’t act all weird about the mess. Not like I got a notice this morning that some girl was gonna invite herself over for cards.”

“Not like you had plans either.”

“I might’ve.” He throws his bag down by the bed and when he turns around she’s bent over his desk looking at his stuff. Thankfully, she’s at least keeping her hands to herself.

“Mr. Doesn’t-Notice-Anybody-Else-In-Class? Mr. Sits-Alone-In-The-Library? Mr. Frightens-Away-All-But-The-Most-Fearless? Yeah. I’m sure you had big plans. Biotiball, maybe.”

He grins and drops onto the edge of his mattress, watches her back stiffen as she gasps and spins around, having realized what she’s said. “Jeff, I—”

“It was funny,” he says. “Shut up and don’t ruin it.”

Her lips twist up, smiling uncertainly, and he flings a pillow at her—he misses and knocks over a photo but at least she stops making that face. “You come to play cards or to play nice?”

“I came to _kick your ass_ at cards,” she says, leaning over to pick up the picture from the floor. He twists his head away a little, a pointed effort not to look at her ass. “Are these your parents?”

“Yeah.” He scoots toward one end of the bed to make room for her and leans over to dig a pack of cards out of his bedside table. “Back on Tiptree—well, Dad’s on Tiptree. Mom’s still on Arcturus. Dad wants her to come home for a while—got a baby on the way—but she loves her job, so... Maybe in a couple months or something.”

She places the picture back on his desk, gently, like it’s fragile—precious—and he realizes that of course it would be to her. He wonders if she has any pictures of her family; he wonders if he should risk asking. He doesn’t, just keeps his mouth shut while she takes off her shoes and situates herself across from him on the bed. The closer she gets... He finds himself pulled back to those memories of his family’s Christmas cider, like back in the library—he’s starting to think it’s _her._ Some kinda perfume or something, maybe, because it’s been there, right in the back of his head, all day and once she’s right there, in the tiny space of his room, it’s even more present. But that’s weird and sappy so he ignores it.

“So what game do you wanna lose first?”

He snorts. “You know how to play Squares?”

...

“Ok. Fine. I give up. How the fuck are you doing that?”

Shepard grins. An hour and a half and he hasn’t won a single game; of course, she knew he wouldn’t. God, she’s tired. But this is worth it; she hasn’t played cards in months, not since home.

“I’m cheating,” she says simply, and covers a yawn with her hand.

His mouth pops open. “You...” And then he laughs, _really_ laughs. She can feel it in the shake of the bed and it’s the first time she’s seen any sort of expression on his face that doesn’t involve some degree of grouchiness. “You devious little shit!”

“My brother taught me,” she says, shuffling the deck again. “Well, my older brother. My younger brother was more of a magic trick kinda kid.”

She begins dealing and sees Jeff hesitating, watching her hands and keeping his mouth carefully closed. “You gonna play cards or play nice, Moreau?”

He lets out a breath through his nose but he smiles. “Ain’t gonna play either with _you,_ you dirty cheater.”

“You can’t prove anything.”

Jeff looks at his cards, but then he just looks at her—not much point now he knows what a cheat she is. “You wanna tell me about ‘em?”

“No,” she says, and tosses a card in the pile, pulls one off the top of the deck. She couldn’t even if she did want to. She couldn’t tell Jeff about Tully’s dark, messy hair or his sweet smile or his soft, pudgy hands because she can hardly remember them. There was blood dripping down his forehead, from somewhere in his hair, and he was screaming and crying and reaching toward her and their parents were heaped in a pile behind him and then everything was blue and bright and smelled like ozone. She can’t remember her baby brother; she can only remember his death.

Jeff clears his throat and starts rearranging his hand. “My dad started growing fig trees when I was about seven. Mom _hates_ ‘em. Used to tell him he stank like the suckers every time he came in.” He laughs, remembering something, and Shepard watches for that elusive expression, for the loud laughter, but this time it’s softer and warm. “Told him that’s why she spent so much time at work, because he smelled like figs and sweat.”

She smiles too—just a little—but says “You don’t have to do that.”

He doesn’t look up from his cards, passes one into the pile and pulls one from the deck. “Is talking about figs against the Rules of Shepard’s Rigged Card Games.”

“No, it isn’t,” she says, laying out all four Aces and grinning at him. “But I still win.”

“Because you _cheated._ ”

“Not if you can’t prove it.”

“You _said_ it!”

“Not if you can’t prove it,” she repeats, still grinning. “I should go, anyway.”

When she tries to pass her cards back to him, he’s looking at his watch. “It’s like 8:30, Shepard.”

“Yeah, but I was in the library real late last night. Investigating. Undercover.”

The eye roll—which she’d been expecting, of course—is coupled with that same grin he wore a second ago, when he was telling her about the figs. Warm. And nice. “Right. Well, by all means, go do your thing, Detective.”

She slips on her shoes and throws her bag over her shoulder in silence, though it’s nothing like the silence in the library.

“I’ll, uh, see you around?” He doesn’t say it ‘til she’s at the door and she’s surprised by his tone—like it’s a question this time, rather than the dismissal it was the other night.

“Yeah. Definitely.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter in which nobody has a good time.

Within a couple months, Shepard’s gone from completely invisible to low-level famous. She’s “the girl that hangs out with Moreau.”

Jeff fucking hates it.

They eat lunch together most days, and she steals fries off his plate and he lets her because he doesn’t really mind it; just more fun to make her think he does. He swats at her hands and she grins like she’s got away with something. Sometimes, always at her request, he tells stories about home; she doesn’t, but she does do great impressions of Professor Hauser. “Miss Shepard,” she’ll say, somehow contorting her face into that of a bulldog, “Please explain to the class how that artless little doodle of yours will prevent a ship from properly deploying its escape pods and thereby killing the entire crew.”

They study together in the afternoons and it turns out that she’s way smarter than he gave her credit for that first night. She _hates_ the math but she’s real good at it. Motivating her to actually _do_ it can be tricky though. “I don’t want to Jeff,” she’ll say, whining and dropping her face against the tabletop with a heavy _thunk._ “Let’s just steal a plane and figure it out. We don’t need math for that.” It’s hard to argue with that, but she’s holding a firm B average.

When he’s having bad days—worse days—she doesn’t walk ahead of him or make that annoyed sigh he’s heard so many times over the course of his life. She’s a minute late to class as often as he is and she never says a goddamn word and he’d never admit he’s glad she’s around on those days.

The problem is that the professors start giving her a pass. She’s late because of _him,_ because she must be so damn nice to keep pace with the guy who limps through campus. So she deserves a break, right? Shouldn’t bust her for tardiness when it’s not her fault, when she’s such a pure and giving soul.

The problem is that Mrs. Becker stops by their library table one afternoon when Shepard’s running late and looks at her empty seat. “Where’s your friend, dear? You haven’t run her off, have you?” And she laughs, like she’s only teasing, like maybe he doesn’t know how prickly he can be, how defensive and harsh and bitter. Like maybe if he isn’t careful, he _will_ “run her off.” Like, in the end, _of course_ he’ll run Shepard off. That’s why nobody else ever sat at the stupid table with him, after all.

The problem is that he can see the other students staring at them at lunch sometimes, knows exactly what they’re probably saying. Moreau’s got himself a girlfriend. Moreau’s got himself a cripple-kisser. Moreau probably can’t even fuck her properly. Why’s she hang out with him anyway? She’s probably just being nice.

And he knows—he fucking _knows_ —that Shepard’s not like that but goddamn if that kinda shit don’t make it hard to be around her anyway.

It happens on a Wednesday night in April, the week before Spring Break. She’s convinced him to come play pool with her in the Rec Hall—despite his many, many protests—and he’s showing her how to line up a shot (because she might be good at cards but she’s shit at pool). To his surprise, he’s actually having a really good time and he’s thinking that by now, maybe he shouldn’t be so surprised about that because he and Shepard _always_ end up having a really good time and so fuck Mrs. Becker because what does she know anyway?

“Now _this,_ ” he says, “ _this_ is how you make a shot.” He winks at her, lines up his cue, and as soon as he pulls back for the shot, somebody grunts and shoves him against the pool table. It hits him across his hips and even though it isn’t quite hard enough for him to break something, it’s definitely gonna bruise. And it hurts like hell. If he hadn’t moved his hand, he’d probably be sporting broken fingers. “ _Fuck._ ”

He hears Shepard say his name, ask if he’s ok, sees her jump on the goddamn pool table to get to him quicker, but he’s not really listening to her because he hears something else too, muttered under the guy’s breath as he walks away like nothing happened.

“Watch it, invalid.”

Jeff’s never been in a fist fight in his life but if he’s gonna break every damn bone is his body, this seems like a great fucking time.

“Fuck you, Ben.”

Asshole just laughs and turns around, tries to level Jeff with a stupid expression like he’s in some goddamn TV novella. “What’d you say to me?”

“I said _Fuck_. _You_.”

The guy takes one step, two steps, three steps forward, and Jeff whips the pool cue over his shoulder and cracks Ben right on his stupid, crew cut head. If everybody wasn’t looking before, they’re sure as hell looking now.

“Son of a _bitch._ ” Ben rubs his head and Jeff takes plenty of goddamn pleasure in the couple tears running down his face. _Good._ And then Ben straightens up and Jeff braces himself for getting the shit beat out of him, wonders if it’ll just be a long ass time in a full body cast or if he’s gonna end up having broken bits of his ribs shoved into his organs, if he’s gonna puncture a lung and suffocate on the floor of the goddamn Rec Hall. Still doesn’t regret it though.

“That’s enough.”

Part of him is relieved when Shepard stands in front of him, though a bigger part won’t let him admit it and an even bigger part than that is annoyed as hell.

“Gonna let your girlfriend lose your fights for you, Moreau?”

He grits his teeth and shrugs Shepard’s hand off his shoulder. “Get off me, Shepard. Move.”

But she won’t and she gives him that look—the _you know you can’t do this_ look. He gets it all the fucking time but he hasn’t gotten it from her before. He files that away for later, that she can make that face, that that’s what she really thinks. That she’s just like every fucking body else after all.

She turns away from him to Ben, says “We’re leaving,” like she’s daring the asshole to do a goddamn thing about it, and pushes Jeff out of the room ahead of her. Out of everything that’s happened tonight, what makes him maddest is how easily he goes, how little he fights her about it. He just lets her lead him outside and they end up sitting on the picnic tables under a street light and not saying anything to each other for a good ten minutes.

“Are you ok? Did he—”

“I’m fine, Shepard.” He’s not fine. Nothing’s broken but everything hurts—his hips, his stomach, even the spot on his back where that dick pushed him. “I don’t need you playing nurse.”

She puts her hand on his shoulder and her fingers are cool against his collar, or maybe he’s just hot from almost getting his ass kicked. He jerks away from her and stands up; the last thing he wants right now—the last thing he wants _ever_ —is her pity.

“Why the fuck are you even hanging out with me, Shepard? You just want everybody to see what a sweet little girl you are?” He wants to move around, to pace or stomp or hit something, but he _can’t._ He just stands there, throwing his hands all over the place, yelling. “You want everybody to see you being brave and good and protecting the poor crippled guy? Want everybody to know how _nice_ you are? Fuck you, Shepard. Fuck you! I don’t need you—”

“Shut the hell up, Jeff.”

In the last couple months, Jeff’s seen Shepard make a lot of faces. She smiles. She laughs. She laughs _a lot._ She’s impossible to read when they play cards. When she nods off in class, her mouth falls open more often than not. Sometimes, when she forgets he’s there, she looks like she’s real far away and he wonders if she’s thinking about her family, about what happened; he wonders if she’s ever gonna tell him about it, if he even really wants to know. He still hasn’t seen her sad, though, hasn’t seen her cry or get angry. So this face—her brows low and bunched together, her mouth all twisted up, those green eyes on him like she’d hit him if she wouldn’t break him—it’s new. Right now, it’s refreshing too. He _wants_ to know that she feels something other than happy, that she feels all the shitty things he feels too. That she’s _fucking mad._ He wants to know that she’s not playing nice with him.

“You know that’s bullshit,” she says.

And he does know that. But he wants her to say it. He wants her to prove it.

“Why you hanging out with me, Shepard?”

It’s quiet for a while, her staring at him, waiting for him to throw up his hands and tell her to forget it, for him to walk off or pretend it didn’t go this far. And he’s staring at her too, waiting for her to give him an excuse to forget how _you know you can’t do this_ looked on her face.

“It’s silly,” she says. She drops back onto the table, props her feet on the bench and crosses her arms in front of her.

He doesn’t say anything; he just waits.

“I heard some people talking about you. In class. They were... they were joking about how you’re from a colony and—”

Goddamn her. God _damn_ her. His heart sinks but he pretends it doesn’t, pretends he’s offended, he’s mad. Just not that he’s hurt. Never that. “Figures. Well you know what, Shepard? I never needed—”

“Will you _shut up,_ ” she yells. And then, quieter, “I wanted to talk to you because you’re a fucking farmer’s kid. And I—I missed...”

It’s that far away look. It’s there and then it’s gone and he’s cataloguing yet another expression: grief. She wears it everywhere but her face, rubbing her thumbs over the points of her elbows, her hands dragging up and down her arms like she’s rubbing away the cold, her dark hair curling over her shoulders and tangling in between her fingers.

“Everybody else here was born planetside. Or they grew up on stations. I wanted to know where you were from. I just wanted to hear you talk about it and—and then you _knew_ and I thought that’d be worse but it was like you were the only person I didn’t have to try so damn hard to hide it from.” She takes a deep breath and still doesn’t look right at him. “You happy? I told you it was stupid.”

He sits down on the picnic bench, by her legs, and stares at the streetlamps by the door of the Rec Hall, watches a couple of people leave and vanish into the dark, heading back toward the dorm halls. “That’s not stupid.”

“Maybe,” she finally concedes. “But _you’re_ being stupid.”

“Maybe.” He pats her foot before returning his hands to his lap. “But you really suck at pool.”

...

When Shepard wakes up, everything is blue and bright and smells kind of like ozone. But she has taught herself to panic quietly, to stop and breathe and evaluate and think.

She knows she is not on Mindoir because things are quiet. There is no screaming and there is no gunfire. There are no boots running through the middle of town, kicking up dust and choking her, catching in the tears on her face and making it even harder to see and breathe. There are no unfamiliar faces staring down at her, no guns waving in the air or pointing at the people hunkered in the corner or launching bullets into her big brother’s chest.

She sees her ceiling—blue, but very much just the plain, normal ceiling of her dorm room. She turns her head and sees her desk—blue, but housing her stack of books, a cup of pens, Jeff’s extra jacket. She looks toward her feet and sees the end of her bed and, beyond that, her door—all blue, but clear of pirates or killers or dead people. She is alone and she is safe and she has shrouded herself in a barrier while she was sleeping. Again.

This almost always happens on nights when she has the dreams. She closes her eyes and focuses. Her biotics trainer says that until she learns to use the “muscles” correctly, she should try “reversing” the process: if being scared turns things on, being safe can turn them off.

She thinks of her daddy the most, thinks of fixing the tractor with him and walking up and down tilled rows of seedlings, of him teasing her or picking her up and hoisting her onto his shoulders—she hadn’t seen him die, or her mama, so it’s easier to think of them than to think of her brothers. But sometimes, that doesn’t work. Sometimes the good memories are too crowded out by the bad ones, by the raid. Sometimes she tries to feel safe and she only makes things worse; she tries to dissolve a barrier and ends up flinging a chair across the room or smashing a cup. _(Or an arm—no, no, no. Don’t think about that. Don’t make it worse.)_

She decides that she will ask Jeff to go swimming with her. She read about it on the extranet—it’s safe, it’s not hard on bones or joints or muscles. It’s fun. He probably won’t go, but she’ll ask him anyway, maybe at lunch; maybe she’ll steal some of his food and wrestle that grin from him. He likes pretending that it bothers him when she swipes a chip or a spoonful of mashed potatoes.

The feeling—the tingling and the almost-adrenaline of charged energy—subsides. Slowly. But after about twenty minutes of planning her “we should go swimming” speech, she opens her eyes and everything is the color it should be. Time to get up then.

Tuesdays and Thursdays were sort of awkward at first.

Jeff spends the mornings in physical therapy and he doesn’t ever talk about it. It’s not hard to tell when he has good days and when he has bad days, though.

Shepard spends the mornings in her own sort of therapy and she doesn’t ever talk about it either. She hopes Jeff can’t tell the difference between her good days and bad days, mostly because she hopes no one else can tell the difference.

When she opens her closet, she leans over the little shelf in back where she keeps her running shoes and an open bottle of cinnamon. It’s the cheap stuff—just a little plastic bottle she picked up at a convenience store on her flight in—but it’s familiar enough. She knows that some of the others have noticed the smell by now. Even some of her teachers have. But the worry and embarrassment are easy enough to carry when weighed against the anxiety she feels on days when the smell isn’t strong enough.

Deep inhale, then shirt and pants and socks and shoes. Things are easier to do when she counts them out, when she makes a list in her head. _Open the door. Walk down the hall. Go to Gym B—one block down, second building on the left. Smile. Say “Good morning, Dr. Vida.”_

She smiles. “Good morning, Dr. Vida.”

“Good morning, Shepard.”

She’d apparently lucked out with Dr. Vida—a VA psychologist who also happened to be a biotics trainer. She wonders how much the Alliance paid her to up and move here just to deal with some teenager’s issues. Twice a week, Shepard comes to the gym—alone—and Dr. Vida tries to teach her to get her biotics under control. It’s not going all that great, but she’s at least not had to buy any more cups since last month.

Dr. Vida also sounds a lot like her mother—not in the way she talks, not at all, but in the tone, in the accent. Both her parents came from Earth and she wonders if Dr. Vida came from the same place as her mother, wherever that is. She never asks. Not knowing it isn’t true is comforting in the worst possible way. Shepard would credit the whole thing to god if she could believe in that without being so angry.

“I made another barrier last night,” she says as she starts her stretches.

Dr. Vida mirrors her, although her movements are more precise, more fluid. “Since you didn’t begin with ‘I broke something this morning,’ I assume you were able to properly diffuse it.”

“Yeah. It was... it was a little harder today.”

“Were you thinking of your family?” Dr. Vida lifts her arms above her head and Shepard follows, remembering to breathe when she’s supposed to.

“Not for long. It—” She shakes her head. “I don’t wanna talk about it today.”

“That’s fine. Why don’t we go ahead and get started then?”

By noon, Shepard has sweat out at least three energy drinks. She can rarely make and break the barriers when she means to, but when she does, they are strong. She can move things, if she really, _really_ concentrates, but making them go where she wants is much harder than simply flinging them around. And, since she’s feeling ok today, she tries a charge. She’s only managed it three times.

It always gives her a nosebleed and she always falls down when she comes out of it, but it’s the only part of this that’s even a little bit fun. Today’s no exception—she falls at the end and when she wipes her face, the blood’s there, but she still feels good about it anyway. So far, today is turning into one of the good days.

“Very good, Shepard! You’re improving.”

“Thanks.” She swallows. The Academy’s giving them a week off; they call it Spring Break, which she thinks is maybe some sort of federal holiday (which Earth seems to have _a lot_ of). At first she’d actually been kind of excited but now the reality is becoming clearer. She’ll be here alone. And...

 “Is, uh—Is my procedure still...”

“Yes,” Dr. Vida says. She waves and Shepard follows her to the locker room. “Barring any complications, you should be back to class just fine as soon as it resumes.”

Shepard washes her face and keeps her eyes on the sink. “Does it hurt?”

“There will be soreness afterward and it will take a while to get used to, but for the surgery itself, they’ll be using local anaesthetic.” She pauses for a moment, considers something. “You don’t need to worry, Shepard. You can hide the implant scars under your hair; they won’t have to shave it.”

Shepard nods. “Ok.”

At least that’s something.

...

She lets her lunch tray clatter onto the table; she knows it bugs Jeff when she makes more noise than is strictly necessary, but she can tell he had a good morning—as good as therapy mornings ever are, anyway—so when he scowls, it’s mostly just to hide the fact that he’s not actually annoyed.

He does that all the time when she takes his fries.

“You’re feeling grabby today,” he says.

She offers him her fruit cup—figs in syrup, _yuck_ —and when he grins and takes it, she decides this is about as good a time as any to broach the subject. “So that guy... Who was he?”

“Who? Ben?”

“No,” she says, rolling her eyes. “The _other_ guy you hit with a stick.”

“Cue.”

“What?”

He shoves the open fig cup into her face and when she wrinkles her nose at the smell, he laughs. “It’s called a pool cue, dumbass.”

“Eat your stupid figs.”

When he’s done—and he takes his sweet time—he says “Ben was my roommate last semester. He’s a dick. End of story.”

“What happened?”

He points his fork at her and she takes the piece of broccoli speared on the end. God knows he wasn’t gonna eat it anyway. “Look, you don’t gotta make it _a thing_. Ok? He was just another one of those all-powerful biotic assholes with a shitty attitude—not like that’s new or nothing—and then he got a spot on the stupid biotiball team and moved the fuck out and into the athletics building. No fucking skin off my ass, either.”

It’s not anger, exactly—or not the kind of anger she’s used to from him—but there’s something there, something bigger than Ben the Biotic Bastard. Still, she can’t help but hook onto his tone. It’s not that she’s been lying to him about it; it just hasn’t really come up before. She doesn’t walk around telling people about Mindoir, so why would she walk around blabbing about this?

“He’s a biotic?”

Jeff just stuffs a piece of bread in his mouth. “Yeah. Bunch of assholes. You know the Academy gives them fucking disability stipends? _Biotics._ They get _paid_ to move shit. With their brains.”

She does know that. She gets one every month. She buys food and shampoo and replaces her cups when she breaks them. She had to give the Academy sixty bucks back in January to replace her desk chair after she accidentally flung it against the wall.

“Meanwhile, I have to fill out seventeen fucking stacks of paperwork just to get a room on the ground floor and try not to sneeze too damn hard. Can you fucking believe that?”

Now, she knows that it will be a lie. She’s a cheat, when it comes to cards, but that doesn’t mean she never throws a game. She never takes advantage, she just plays tricks. But that’s different than this. This will be a lie. And he’s her friend.

But he’s her friend. Her only friend. And she can’t lose him. So she lies.

“No. I can’t believe it.”

“I know! It’s total bullshit. Fucking—”

“You wanna go swimming with me?”

That brings him up short, but he’s not nearly as surprised as she’d expected him to be. When he speaks, it’s so careful, so measured, that she thinks she may have made a mistake. “Where’d you get an idea like that?”

“Um, is it a weird idea?”

“No,” he says, tone still very measured. “You do an extranet search for that? For stuff I can do?”

Lying to him twice in less than five minutes? Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t. It makes her insides twist. She’s never been good at lying; she’s never wanted to be.

She looks at her food, picks at it with her fork. “Are you mad?”

“No.”

The relief is instant, but not quite whole because his tone is still very flat, still very guarded, and if he’s not mad, she doesn’t know what this means.

“I’ll go swimming with you. If you want. After I get back.”

Her eyes shift upward, just for a second, just to check, and he’s shoveling food into his mouth so Shepard takes it as genuine. When Jeff doesn’t talk, there’s not really much to be done about it, anyway. “Are your parents still coming to visit?”

“Yeah,” he says, lighting up a little. “I’m gonna take the train over to New York. Mom wants to see a play...”

...

Early Friday morning, Shepard invites herself to take a cab with him to the train station. Which saves Jeff the trouble of asking her to take the cab with him to the train station.

They don’t talk much in the cab, mostly because she starts listing all the things she hopes he didn’t forget to pack.

“Your clothes?”

“Yeah, Shepard.”

“Did you remember your toothbrush?”

“ _Yes,_ Shepard.”

“What about your hair brush?”

“Jesus, Shepard, yes.” He doesn’t even use a hair brush. “Stop acting like my mom. It’s weird. And kinda gross.”

“Sorry.”

At the train station, though, Shepard can’t seem to _shut up._ And she’s hardly actually saying anything.

“This place is really loud, isn’t it? And crowded.”

“How do you know which—oh. There’s a map. Did you check the map, Jeff?”

“When’s it get here? How long ‘til you get to New York? Where, uh... Where exactly is that again?”

It’s pretty damn hard not to laugh at her, wriggling her way through the crowd and gaping at almost everything. He’s got to remind himself—a lot—that basically all her time on Earth has been on campus. She never brings it up, so he’s not sure where she was between the time of the raid and when she came to the Academy, but clearly there weren’t trains there.

They drop onto a bench and Jeff watches her for a second—fingers beating against her thighs and eyes darting all over the place. It’s even making him jittery, like he can feel her anxiety prickling at his skin like static. But he supposes it makes a certain amount of sense; she still hasn’t told him anything about Mindoir, but it’s probably a safe guess that being in a pushy crowd like this would make her nervous. Hell, the prospect of getting knocked down and crushed to death makes him pretty nervous too, to be honest.

When his train arrives, Shepard doesn’t offer to carry his bag for him and he thanks her for that—in his head, anyway.

“Can I hug you?”

He’d kinda been expecting that; won’t admit he was kinda hoping too. So he turns away to stow his bag and takes his time so the blush—however light—can recede.

“What is it Shepard,” he says, when he turns back to her. “You scared you’re gonna break me?”

She twists her lips up, the way she does when she’s anxious about something she’s gonna say. “You don’t really like it when I touch you.”

That isn’t untrue, exactly. But it’s not quite true either. He holds out his arms and rolls his eyes. “Come on. Don’t get excited and crack any of my ribs.”

She’s so slow and careful, he actually has to pull her to him a little. Hell, otherwise he’d probably miss his train at the rate she was going. She doesn’t squeeze him—thank god she’s got that much sense—but it is nice.

And she smells nice—well, she smells like she always smells but there’s something nice about it. Something familiar. “I’m only gonna be gone for like a week you know. You don’t gotta get all clingy about it.”

“You haven’t shoved me off yet,” she says.

“Just humouring you. I know you’re gonna be bored, sitting around the whole time. Missing me terribly. Probably crying. It’s kinda pathetic, really, but—”

“Get on your stupid train, you prick.” She pushes away from him, but really it’s more like she puts her hands on his chest and steps back. She doesn’t put any pressure on him. She never does.

When he boards, he finds a seat next to a window and puts on his headphones. Shepard made sure he remembered to pack them. Because she’s a pain in the ass.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess maybe I'm just in a "work on stuff I didn't mean to abandon two or three years ago but did" mood. And also: I love these idiots.

The only good thing about being at the hospital alone is that it doesn’t matter if she’s scared. Nobody can see her except the nurse. There are no counsellors, no foster parents, no Alliance evaluators, no teachers. There’s nobody around to tell her she needs to calm down or that it’s ok to be scared or that she should face her fears and talk about it.

That’s all fucking bullshit anyway.

But she can be scared. She can shut her eyes and beat her head against her pillow and tie knots with the drawstrings of Jeff’s jacket and nobody’s around to analyze her.

The nurse asks her, once, if anyone came with her. Saying no earns her a pitying look and Shepard doesn’t want that either.

“You don’t have to stay,” she says to him first. But it doesn’t work.

“Oh, it’s no trouble, dear.”

It’s no wonder Jeff’s so damn blunt with people. “I want to be by myself. Please leave.”

She ignores the way the nurse looks at her—frustrated because she’s doing this all wrong—and she doesn’t say anything else ‘til he leaves. When he’s gone though, she can’t stop herself from yelling after him. “I have people! They’d have come if I’d asked!” Those words flop against the closed door and fall to the floor, flat as they are.

But it doesn’t matter if it’s a lie. The nurse can’t prove that. Nobody in this whole damn building can prove that. They don’t know. They don’t get to know. Whatever she has, whatever she is, however she feels—it’s _hers_ and they don’t get to have it, don’t get to take it and twist it up into something else just because they think it’s better, just because they think she’s feeling it all wrong or saying it all wrong or “dealing with it” all wrong. It’s hers.

And she reminds herself of that while she waits, while she hides her hands in the sleeves of Jeff’s jacket and finds patterns in the ugly floral wallpaper. She just lets herself feel tiny and alone and terrified until they come to get her and walk her to the procedure room.

Like the rest of the hospital, the room is too clean: tiled walls and floors, a silver tray of sharp instruments that glint in the ugly fluorescent lighting, the smell of antiseptic. They sit her down in a chair that looks like a torture device and begin to prepare around her. She’s not really a variable here; they’ve done this hundreds of times before and will do it hundreds of times after her. It might be a comforting thought if this were a tonsillectomy. Mostly she just feels like a decorative piece of taxidermy, some weird earth animal head with dead eyes staring out at the room like the one above the Dean’s desk.

They secure her wrists and ankles with padded straps, and her head and neck with something metal, something cold. It isn’t tight, exactly, but she can’t move at all and it makes her feel like she’s choking.

“What we’re going to do is inject you with a local anaesthetic near the base of your skull,” a doctor says, coming around from behind her with syringe in hand. Shepard wiggles her hands and feet. “You’ll be awake, but you won’t feel anything. We’ll ask you questions and we need you to answer them. It’s going to—”

“This isn’t optional,” Shepard says. “All biotics have to do this, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then why bother explaining it to me? Why pretend I have a say? Just get it over with.”

The doctor, at least, doesn’t look at her like she’s just some poor, scared teenager. He just nods his head and goes back around behind her saying “Just make sure you answer all the questions and tell us if anything feels strange.” Shepard figures she’s not the only difficult patient to come through.

She can feel it, when they give her the shot. After that, though, it’s fine. She can’t see what they’re doing, can’t feel it; she can pretend nothing’s going on. One of them stands in front of her, talks to her, asks her questions, makes her tap her fingers and toes.

It’s this metal thing on her neck that’s getting to her. She didn’t wear one—a collar—at the end. They thought she was dead, after all. She thought so too; it all started to blur together after the first few hours, but she saw them—the ones who survived, yanked forward by chains connecting them, one collar to another, prodded onto an alien ship and then just... gone.

“Why don’t you tell me about your classes? You’re part of the Academy, right?”

His voice carries the monotone calm of another counsellor and she can’t help but hate him. She tries not to; she tries to remember that he’s just a person and that people are good and that he’s probably good too but she can’t stand him. She doesn’t want to talk to him. She doesn’t want to look at him. She wants to scream, to fight, to use her stupid biotics to fling him against a wall. Just like before. “I’m being trained as a pilot,” is all she says.

He glances up at her monitors; she hears the beeping tempo increase, knows she needs to calm down before one of the doctors behind her announces it. “Do you enjoy it?”

“Yes.” She fights the urge to twist her head, to look behind her and see what they’re doing to her. How can she really know? How can she be _sure_? “Can you loosen this? Can’t we just take it off?” She can’t even grab at it with her hands, secured as they are on the armrests.

“I’m afraid not,” the man says. He smiles under his mask; she can see it in the way his eyes crinkle. “Why don’t we talk about something else? Where are you from?”

_Mindoir._ “The Traverse.” _Mindoir._ “A colony.” _Mindoir Mindoir Mindoir._ “A farm.”

Everything seems to move so slow then, blurring like she’s seeing it from under the water. The sounds are all wrong and everything is blue.

“Hands off! Hands off!”

Someone is yelling.

“She’s moving too much! You’re gonna have to—”

Someone is screaming.

“—sedate her. She’s gonna—”

She’s screaming.

“—hurt herself. Get the damn sedative.”

\---

_It was warm that day; the air was thick and sweet with mist. It had rained for four straight days and the sun hadn’t yet fought its way through the cloud cover. The whole farm smelled like blackberries and cinnamon and beets._

_Daddy was just hopping down from Tommy—their scrapped together blue tractor—when Fera, Mama, and the boys made their noisy way out the kitchen door._

_“Daddy, Tully doesn’t want to go to school,” she said, though it sounded more like a question because Fera didn’t know what to do about it. Tully—sticky with smashed blackberry on his face and hands—was standing next to their mama, holding fistfuls of her skirt in front of him. He still wasn’t talking much, but he’d been doing much better these last few months. He’d even been excited about starting school, until this morning when he realized school meant “not at home.” Now he wasn’t having it._

_“Is that today?” Daddy asked, running his dirty hands through his dark hair and looking at Mama like he wasn’t sure if he was in trouble or not._

_“No,” Mama said back. “Tomorrow. But the teachers are having a little open house for the kids today and these two wanted to go—though I think it’s got less to do with school and more to do with girls.” She looked at Emilio and Fera out of the corners of her eyes and suddenly the two of them looked just as maybe-guilty as Daddy did._

_He squatted down in front of Mama and looked Tully in the eye. “You don’t want to go with your brother and sister?”_

_Tully shook his head, still refusing to let go of Mama’s skirt. His dark curly hair stuck out in all directions and Fera smirked, thinking about how he would always get his way if he kept on looking like he did—cute little baby face and wild hair, blackberry smush dark against his cheeks. She knew Daddy was gonna give in. She just knew it. Emilio did too, she could tell._

_Daddy held out his hands, arms open wide, and Tully ran into them. Daddy folded him up and stood back to his full height with Tully twisting around to lean his head against Daddy’s chest. “Well,” Daddy said, “I don’t guess you have to go today. But tomorrow, ok, honey?”_

_Tully nodded, but Fera thought they’d all just see about that. She knew the rest of them were thinking it too. Daddy was a mush—she tried not to take advantage now that she was old enough to know it, but sometimes she still did. Just in special circumstances. Tully must’ve thought this was a special circumstance and who was she to tell him it wasn’t? Mama just sighed, but she didn’t say anything._

_“Can I still go?” Emilio asked._

_“Me too!” Fera knew he’d leave her behind if he could but she wasn’t going to let him get away with it that easy. He barely ever wanted to hang out with her anymore. It wasn’t personal, he’d said, but it still sucked._

_“Fine, fine,” Mama said. “But you two had better stay at school.” She gave them both very pointed looks—they meant_ Emilio, don’t sneak off with any girls _and_ Fera, don’t sneak off with any girls _and_ Emilio, watch your sister _. He sighed—loudly—and Fera sunk a little bit. That’s why he never wanted her around anymore, because he had to babysit her. But she didn’t need babysitting; she was only doing what he did anyway. He just mostly didn’t get caught when he did it. And anyway that night at the dance hadn’t been her fault. Even if it had been—which it wasn’t—that was months ago; he ought to have forgotten about it by now._

_“Be back well before evening,” Daddy said, and Tully nodded in agreement. “I don’t want you two walking all that way back in the dark.”_

_“Ok.” Emilio was already walking; he got maybe six steps from the door before Daddy coughed; Emilio sighed, and turned around and came back. “Love you, Mama,” he said, and he leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. He slung an arm around Daddy (and Tully, who leaned in to kiss him right on the nose) and did the same. Fera could tell he felt the blackberry juice on his face, but he didn’t wipe it off._

_She roped both parents into a hug, felt Tully stick a hand in her hair, and coated them in a few sing-song “I love you’s” before tearing off after Emilio, who was gaining quick on the trail to town._

_From the edge of the front yard, Fera could still hear them talking to Tully._

_“It’s ok, kiddo. Maybe we’ll play around with those fancy superpowers, huh, son?”_

_“Don’t call them that, Danny.”_

\---

They make the call to fully sedate her before trying the procedure again. Luckily, they hadn’t done much by the time she started freaking out, so she didn’t mess up her brain or her stupid implant. She did get stitches though, and they have to make a second incision, so her scar will look a little funny, they say, as if she cares about that, of all things.

After that, they don’t let Shepard leave the hospital for three more days. Probably they’d have kept her longer but Shepard convinced Dr. Vida to convince them otherwise.

Most of that time was spent sleeping, so she doesn’t know why she’s still so tired on the way back to the Academy.

“How are you feeling?” Dr. Vida asks her.

Shepard only shrugs and looks out the window at the highway passing them by. She has a chip in her head, seven more stitches than she was supposed to, a ring of bruises around her neck from her flailing, and an empty bedroom to return to. She’s great, obviously.

“You know, Shepard, I know you’re still getting used to the Academy, but this implant really will make things easier and you’ll be able to focus on some of the things that you’ve been avoiding.”

She shrugs again and stays quiet for the rest of the drive. Thankfully, it’s short.

\---

On Sunday, on the train back, Jeff emails Shepard, tells her what time he’ll be back and not to worry about meeting him at the station. He kind of wants her to, kind of wants to think that she will anyway, but he also kind of doesn’t because he remembers how anxious and jittery she was when he left. But she doesn’t answer, and she doesn’t meet him at the station, or meet him at the cab stand, or come by his room.

On Monday, Jeff waits for her outside the dorm buildings like he does almost every morning. She doesn’t come. She doesn’t show up in class, or in the next one, or the one after that. He eats lunch by himself and he still doesn’t get any kind of response when he asks where she is. In the afternoon, he even goes by her room. Nobody answers.

On Tuesday, she finally decides to let him know she’s not dead.

_Sorry. Everything’s fine but I can’t come over tonight._

_Then I’ll come to you,_ he sends back, already on his way there.

Maybe he just hadn’t realized how worried he’d been—that she was avoiding him ( _what did I do_ ) or that she was sick ( _but she was fine_ ) or that she’d just up and left ( _where would she go_ ). But the second her door opens, all his plans for _not freaking out_ are pretty much shot. Stupid grin gives him away, he knows, and to be honest, he’s not real damn sure where his hand plans to go when he starts reaching for her but then she reaches up to let all her hair fall out of the bun she’d stuffed it into and whatever he was doing, whatever he was thinking, just falls away.

“What the fuck happened to you?”

Jeff’s not real fond of people touching him—either they don’t have the sense to not crush him or they’re scared to touch him at all. Not real fun either way. Likewise, he’s not real fond of touching people. Except for his family, Shepard’s pretty much the only person he’s had any sort of meaningful physical contact with in years. And it’s been minimal—by “normal” standards, anyway. A thump on the arm here, a pat on the back there. A hug at a train station. Not minimal by _his_ standards.

And maybe he was gonna hug her again? He definitely wasn’t gonna trace his fingertips over the bruises on her neck, curving around the back of her head. He wasn’t gonna keep his hand there either, half-panicked at the thought of whatever’s caused this and half-stupid with the idea that he’s touching her like this at all. So he just pulls away, shoves his hand into his pocket and stares at her, waiting for an explanation.

“I didn’t think you were coming straight over,” she says, opening the door a little more and glancing behind her. “You can come in, if you want?”

“Uh, yeah. Ok.” He hadn’t really thought this far ahead. This is the first time he’s really been here. She spends plenty of afternoons in his room, playing cards or videogames or just talking. But this feels sort of weird, like it isn’t the same thing even though it kinda is. She’s never invited him over before. She didn’t actually invite him over this time either.

The first thing he realizes is that Shepard lives alone. There’s only one bed. Her room isn’t at all what he’d expected—although, now that he thinks of it, he isn’t sure _what_ he’d expected. Not this though: it’s empty. There’s a plain grey standard-issue blanket on her bed, a stack of her books and a few pens on her desk. The only spot of color in the place is one of his jackets (which she was _supposed_ to have returned weeks ago) slung over the back of her desk chair. There’s no clutter, no dishes, no scribbles on scraps of paper or pictures on the wall or books that aren’t for class. Never mind the absent roommate; it’s like nobody lives here at all. The smell, though—that at least is _Shepard._ It’s so much stronger in here. “Cinnamon? That’s what that is?”

She nods and drops into her desk chair, leaving him the mattress. “We grew cinnamon trees. Before, I mean. On Mindoir. I missed the smell.”

He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t get on the bed though—it’d be weird because it’s her _bed,_ but it’s weirder because it doesn’t seem like _her_ bed. Just _a_ bed. So he just stands there in front of her and keeps his hands in his pocket.

“You gonna tell me what happened to you?”

Another expression for him to file away: terror. Wide eyes and her face drained of color. Her mouth open, just a bit, and her hands in fists on her thighs. Completely still. Breathless.

“I meant your neck,” he clarifies quickly, hands up and— _dammit_ —coming to rest on her shoulders. “I just meant what happened to your neck.”

“It looks worse than it is.”

“It _looks_ like somebody tried to strangle you or something. Shepard.” She isn’t looking at him and he needs her to. He _needs_ her to. So he puts a hand under her chin and makes her, knows she’ll give in before she pushes against him. “Shepard. Did somebody hurt you? You need to tell me.”

“What? No. Nobody—”

“Shepard, if somebody did this to you...” If somebody did this to her, he doesn’t know what the fuck _he’s_ gonna do about it. But if he can hit Ben in the head with a pool cue, he can probably hit somebody else with one too. Once, at least.

But she shakes her head, insistent but careful because his hand is still holding her chin. “Nobody hurt me, Jeff. I just—I thrash around a lot. When I sleep. And I just hurt myself again.”

Now he moves his hands, rubs his face. It sort of makes sense. Hell, the news footage he saw of Mindoir after the attack—so yeah, sure, of course she can’t sleep. But _this_? This doesn’t look like the sort of thing that can happen just from thrashing around at night—not that he hasn’t had weird injuries of his own after a crappy night’s sleep...

He takes a deep breath. “If you’re lying to me and somebody did this to you—”

She actually laughs a little—not like normal, but enough to soothe the tension in his shoulders, enough to make him at least _mostly_ believe her. “Nobody hurt me.” And then, “You don’t have to _worry_.”

“Don’t get cute.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t call you or anything.” His shoulders stiffen again. Even if she’d been in the infirmary, she _could_ have called. Or asked someone to. _Couldn’t_ and _didn’t_ aren’t the same.

“I copied notes for you,” he says, turning away to pull a few of his notebooks from his bag. He pauses before turning back to her, pretends to dig around in his bag. “You’d tell me, right? If you weren’t ok? Because you can. I’d want you to.”

She doesn’t say anything at first, and he doesn’t look at her. She never pushes him, never pries too deep. He can try to do the same for her, can’t he? He’s not sure this is the same thing though.

“I’d tell you if this wasn’t ok,” she finally says. He hands over the notebooks. It’s not what he wishes she’d said, but if it’s all she can give him then it’s at least enough for right now.

\---

Shepard really, _really_ wants to hate her implants on principle. She hadn’t asked for them, hadn’t wanted them, hated everything it meant about her and what she’d done—what she hadn’t done—and what people were gonna see when they looked at her. A dangerous thing. A dangerous thing they could _use._

She _does_ hate her implants—and her biotics—for the sake of all that. If she could claw her way into her body and yank it all out—blood and viscera and bone—she would. 

But the absolute worst part of it is that her hatred can’t be _pure_. The goddamn implants make everything so much easier. Suddenly the energy in her body isn’t just tingling and static and anxiety bubbling in her veins; she can _feel_ it and summon it and direct it like an extension of herself. And she’s never felt that way before; hell for almost a year now, she hasn’t felt like she’s had any control over anything.

She can hit any target Dr. Vida sets up. She can lift thirty-seven pounds and fling it across the gym. She can throw waves and waves of energy. Her barriers are close to impenetrable. She can charge farther, and faster, and even though her balance still needs work, she wipes the back of her hand across her face and there’s no blood.

She wonders, only briefly, if this is how her little brother felt about _his_ biotics, if he’d taken joy in the movement and the strength and the fun of it. She wonders if he’d ever— _blood dripping down his forehead from somewhere in his dark, messy hair. He’s crying. He’s screaming. Their parents are heaped in a pile behind him, limbs broken and jutting at odd angles. Everything is blue and bright—_ and then she shoves it all away, decides that however Tully felt about his biotics, it doesn’t matter. Because he’s dead. He isn’t coming back.

Dr. Vida gives her a bottle of water and Shepard follows her to a bench.

“You’re doing remarkably well, Shepard. You’d built up a great foundation of endurance; I knew the implants would help with the control issue.”

“Thanks.”

“And I think you’ve got enough control to begin training with the other biotics now.”

This brings her up short and she coughs on her water. “What? Why?”

Dr. Vida gives her that look, that _I know what you need_ look. “Shepard, the goal was always to get you acclimated, both emotionally and biotically, to interact with your peers.”

“I _do_ interact with my peers!”

“Mr. Moreau is _one_ peer.” She holds up her hands to cut off Shepard’s immediate protest. “And yes— _yes_ , Shepard, I am pleased to see you’ve found someone you’re comfortable with but you have to become comfortable with other people too. You have to socialize. And you’re ready to hone your skills with the other students. Besides, you and I need to focus on your therapy.”

Shepard’s learned that her best bet when it comes to Dr. Vida is to say as little as possible, particularly if it isn’t related to biotics. She knows that part of Vida’s job is “fixing” her, but she doesn’t _want_ somebody fixing her. And keeping her mouth shut so far has been hard enough with all the invasive questions, but now? Without training to fall back on, there’ll be no respite from “face your demons” and “talking through it will help you process” and “this is what I’m here for, Shepard.”

“I’m doing _fine,_ ” she argues. “I don’t need to ‘focus on therapy.’”

“From what your surgeon told me about your procedure, I don’t think even you believe that to be true.”

She absently runs her fingers along the bruises on her neck. “If you’re such good pals, maybe you should’ve told them not to ask me about where I came from. A fucking raid probably isn’t the best choice for conversation in the middle of a goddamn brain plug.” She regrets the words the second they’re out, knows her mama would _not_ appreciate that tone of voice, knows she’s just given away more of herself than she meant to. “Do I even get a choice?”

“About the training, no. I’ve already made sure you were put on the roster. You’ll have training on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at the time we normally meet, but you’ll be in the primary gym with the others.”

“And the stupid squabbling over my ‘emotional instability?’”

Vida tilts her head, looks at Shepard like she’s squeezing herself in between every single word, searching for “I’m sad; please help.” Shepard won’t let her find that—if she wants emotions, Shepard’s got a whole range: rage, guilt, fear. But she’s not asking for help. She doesn’t have _anything_ left except for this and she’s not handing it over to Vida in a little box with a bow. She’s not letting it go so that everyone else can feel better.

“I cannot _make_ you talk to me, Shepard, but you will have to continue coming to sessions with me. An hour a week. That was part of the deal.”

“Fine.”

\---

By Friday, Jeff’s freaked out.

It’s not just that Shepard’s been sort of short-tempered this week—that he can deal with—it’s just that she’s not herself. And sure, he doesn’t have a lot of experience with “angry Shepard,” but he can just tell that this isn’t... her.

And he’d never say it out loud, but he’s way too scared to ask her what the hell is going on. He’s trying to trust her—to trust that she was telling him the truth about those bruises (the ones that are still there, even now, hiding under that fucking turtleneck, scattered over her throat; the thought makes him bristle). But he also knows that there was something she wasn’t telling him, that she practically out-and-out said she didn’t trust him with... With what? Her _feelings_? Her _issues_? Who the fuck is he to expect something like that anyway?

Cinnamon trees. Nobody else knows that. He keeps reminding himself of that—that his jacket is hanging over the back of her desk chair, that she plays cards with him, that she remembers he likes figs, that she misses the smell of cinnamon. She gave him that and that has to matter.

But still, he doesn’t want to ask and be met with the same answer. He doesn’t want to ask and push her farther away—she apparently wasn’t even nearly as close as he’d thought this whole time and that’s... that’s...

“You want my sprouts?”

She thinks about it, only takes half. “You ought to eat them, you know.”

He only shrugs and watches her pick at her food. She’s been doing _that_ all week too.

“You still wanna go swimming, right?”

She nods without looking up from her plate. To be honest, he isn’t much looking forward to it. His first instinct, when she’d asked him to go, was to be angry. _What? You been scheming with my physical therapist or something?_ But he knows she wouldn’t do that. And as sick as he is of swimming, it’d kind of made him happy to think of her bent over a computer, maybe for hours, trying to find something they could do together, something that she probably thought would be fun. He likes the thought of her thinking of him, of her being excited about spending time with him. He doesn’t want that—whatever it is—to be gone. Or to have not actually been there.

“Well, I was thinking we could go tomorrow. Nobody’ll be there; everybody’s going to that stupid biotiball game.”

She starts to say something, pauses, decides to say something else. He doesn’t like any of this. “Actually, I was thinking of going to the game. And I was hoping you’d go with me.”

He snorts. “What? No way.”

Her fork clatters against the table and he realizes he’s fucked up. She takes a deep breath and her voice is measured, like she’s forcing the words through her teeth. “Fine. I’ll go by myself.”

“Why the hell would you wanna go to that anyway? You playin’ cheerleader for those assholes, now?”

Her jaw tightens. “Don’t you think you’re being kinda judgmental? Like even just a little?”

“So what if I am? Why the hell do you care if I’m not in the Biotic Fan Club anyway?”

“It’s not—” She takes another breath, picks up her tray and stands to leave. “I just wanted you to go with me. You don’t wanna go, fine. Don’t go. I’m going.”

And then she walks the hell off! He doesn’t understand why this matters so damn much, why—of _all_ things—she’d ask him to go watch a fucking biotiball game. He grits his teeth and follows her, not that she’s putting a lot of effort into giving him a chance to catch up. He doesn’t even bus his tray, just goes straight for the door and catches her a few steps outside the cafeteria. When he grabs her arm, he almost expects her to jerk away, worries—for just a second—that she’s gonna hurt him, accidentally. It would fuck her up even more than it’d fuck him up, but he grabs her arm anyway and she just stops. He can feel the tension wash right through her, fall right out, and he _knows_ there has got to be a way to get past whatever the fuck this is. “Look. You want me to go with you to the stupid game, I’ll go.”

Her shoulders droop and when she finally answers, she doesn’t sound mad. But she doesn’t sound like _her._ “I’m sorry I did that. You don’t have to go, Jeff. I know you don’t want to.”

“Of course I don’t fucking want to. But you want me to be there and I told you—” She’s not even looking at him and this is hard. He doesn’t mean to sound so damn angry but his frustration is bubbling over and he can’t keep it out of his voice. “I don’t wanna go see the stupid biotics bounce a ball against the wall. But I wanna go _with you._ So I’m gonna. So don’t just walk off.”

He can feel her relax—not even just how the muscles of her arm soften under his hand, but it’s like a tension he hadn’t known was there just dissipates, jitters that he hadn’t noticed along his skin just fall away. He doesn’t know what else to say, how else to tell her that he’ll get a goddamn season pass to biotiball if it’s that fucking important to her. He doesn’t get it, but that’s not really the point.

She turns around, but she’s slow, careful of his grip on her, loose as it is. “Can I ask you something?” He only nods. “Why are you hanging out with me?”

Of course he thinks back to that night outside the Rec Hall. Of course he does. He squints. “Is this a trick question?”

When she laughs—a real, _Shepard_ kind of laugh—he doesn’t think he’s ever been so relieved in his life. “No. It’s not a trick question.”

The relief is short-lived, though. He doesn’t know how to answer her; he doesn’t know how to explain it all. Even if he could force that kinda sappy crap out of his mouth, he doesn’t think he’d be able to explain it right. “Because. You’re... _you_.”

All he can do is hope—really, really hope—that she knows what the hell he’s saying. It’s unfair, to expect her to be able to read his mind, to be able to pull everything he’s not saying from three fucking words that sound empty and sentimental when he says them out loud. But he doesn’t know how else to even try.

She wraps her hand around the back of her neck (yet another habit she’s had this week) and he thinks of those bruises, wonders if they hurt the same way on her that they do on him. “Ok.”

\---

Biotiball is fucking boring.

Part of her wants Jeff to let loose all the snarky remarks she knows he’s holding in. It’d at least be something familiar in the middle of all this absolute _shit_ that she doesn’t know and doesn’t want. This gym she’s been avoiding, this crowd all pressed in around her, these other biotics she doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know. But the other part of her knows that she’s part of this—not the game, but the whole thing, the biotics—and that when Jeff rattles off about what entitled assholes they are, he’s talking about her too. And it’s not fair for her to be upset because she’s the one who lied about it, but that doesn’t mean she wants to hear it.

She doesn’t even really want to be here. And fuck knows Jeff doesn’t want to be here. But she’d just wanted to see them, to get an idea of who these people are when they’re not just being students, or when they aren’t eating lunch, or when they aren’t shoving Jeff into a pool table. She wanted to see them being biotics, wanted to know if she could ever really have anything in common with them. But all she’s doing is tapping her fingers against the bleachers and wishing they were somewhere else.

_“You have to socialize,” my ass,_ she thinks. She wonders if Jeff’s actually bothering to watch, if his eyes are following Ben the Biotic Bastard around the court, or if he’s keeping track of points because he thinks she’ll wanna talk about it afterward. She doesn’t even know the rules, has no idea what the ref keeps whistling about.

This was stupid. She’s not learning anything. She’s just uncomfortable. And angry. She should have fucking gone swimming.

She leans over, toward Jeff, though she’s careful not to get too close. “These are the stupidest outfits I’ve ever seen.”

He laughs—it’s the only expression he’s made all morning other than a constant grimace. “Yeah, no kidding.”

“Let’s just go.”

His brows get all bunchy—Jeff’s special blend of normal-grumpy and confusion. “You don’t wanna see the end? They haven’t even hit half-time yet.”

Her eyes widen. “Are you fucking serious?”

And he laughs again. God, this is miserable. “I can’t decide if I’m glad you hate it or not.”

She deserves that, dragging him here, knowing he didn’t wanna come. She just shakes her head and drags her hands down her face. “Definitely, let’s go.”

They have to skirt around the court, behind the team benches and supply shelves. And it’s fine; she can stand being this close to all that energy—all the buzzing and tingling and static that runs through her because of it—if it means she’s that much closer to the door.

But fate has it out for her—or maybe, for once, it was looking out for her—because she turns around to say something and she sees that ball get knocked out of bounds. Everything gets slow. Jeff mutters “shit.” The ref blows that damned whistle and it sounds like it’s underwater. Jeff’s hands instinctively go up to guard his face. Everything is blue. The ball smacks against her barrier and bounces back toward the court. She drops her hands and looks around.

Nobody’s looking at her; someone’s putting the ball back in play and the clock starts back up. It’s almost like nothing’s happened, nothing’s changed. Almost.

“ _Shit_.”


	4. Chapter 4

People have lied to him before. Hell, everybody lies. He lies. It just happens sometimes and it’s not a big deal. But people lie to Jeff for real specific reasons— _one_ real specific reason, anyway.

“Sorry, you can’t play. We’ve already got full teams.”

“Oh, well, actually, we decided to go _next_ weekend, so...”

“Of course I believe in you, son, but the military has certain... expectations of their pilots.”

“No! Really! It’s not your disease, it’s just—”

He gets it. Sometimes it’s for his sake (or at least that’s what they want to believe) and sometimes it’s for their own sake (and at least then they’re being honest) but this is a new one.

“I didn’t think you’d—I thought you wouldn’t wanna hang out with me anymore.”

And it takes him a minute to even really _hear_ her because Jeff doesn’t get to make those kinds of choices. He never gets the chance, so he stopped giving other people the chance a long time ago. And if he is finally gonna have the opportunity to end something on his fucking terms for once, it isn’t gonna be _this._ It isn’t gonna be Shepard. It’s sure as shit not gonna be because she can throw crap around with her brain.

“And I’m _sorry_ ,” she says, flinging her hands all over the place. It’d be almost cute, seeing her so distressed, curled up against the edge of his bed like she does on movie nights and that blush spreading across her face. As things are though, it’s not. It’s just—well, somehow, _she_ lied and _he_ feels like the jackass. “I should’ve just told you and if you hadn’t...”

“Shepard.” It’s not enough to just say her name. He has to reach out and grab her hands and he doesn’t get how she can’t see it: when he reaches toward her, she stills. That matters. “I’m not mad at you. I don’t—I mean I feel like a dick for saying all that shit but—”

“But you _meant_ all that shit. And that’s fine. I mean it isn’t, exactly, but I can’t just—I’m not holding that against you, it’s just that...” She makes a frustrated sound, something like that noise she makes when he corrects her math. “Why is this so _hard_?”

It’s a dirty joke waiting to happen but this probably isn’t the best time. “It doesn’t have to be hard, Shepard.”

She looks at him like she’s going to cry and if god was ever gonna do him a favour, now would be the time. Crying is not a thing he knows how to deal with, especially not with Shepard.

“I _lied_ to you, Jeff.”

He thinks back to that day in the library, when Shepard had been running late and the librarian had stopped by, wondering where she was. “You haven’t run her off, have you?”

Sure, Shepard lied. But not because she wanted to hurt him. Not because she was avoiding him. Not because she didn’t wanna admit—to him or to herself—that having him hanging around was inconvenient. It’s not that Jeff’s never had a friend before. There’ve been plenty of people that he hadn’t wanted to lose to one thing or another, that he hadn’t wanted to “run off.” But there’ve only been a couple people who’ve cared that much about not losing _him_.

He’s not _glad_ Shepard lied to him. He’s not _glad_ he made her feel like she had to. He’s not _glad_ she didn’t trust him enough to know better. But he _is_ glad that this whole mess is about how important he is to her. And he’s not gonna pretend he isn’t; he doesn’t have to.

He releases one of her hands and pulls down the neck of her sweater a little, just enough that the discoloration peeks over the top. “Will you tell me what happened?”

And he needs to know, not just what happened to her, but if she’s ready to tell him.

“I got implants over Spring Break,” she says. He can feel her pulse speeding up under his fingers. “And I—there were some complications.”

“Did you—did somebody go with you?”

She doesn’t answer. Of course nobody was there; who the hell would it have been? Him. It should’ve been him. _“I just wanted you to go with me.”_ Fucking biotiball. She has to know that was unfair. She has to know that. There was no way for him to know that she’d be alone, that she’d be in a hospital having shit plugged into her head while he was watching a musical with his parents and laughing when his dad turned his nose up at a sushi roll. But of course she was alone. Even if she hadn’t been alone in the hospital, she’d have been alone _here._ On Earth. On campus. And it never even occurred to him. 

 _I wish you had told me._ “Are you ok?”

She starts to say something but he cuts her off. “I mean it, Shepard. I need you to tell me the truth. I need to know if you’re ok. Not just right now.”

She nods. “I’m ok.”

“And later? You can’t do this to me again.”

“I know. I promise.”

He lets go of her, watches the neck of her sweater sneak back up her throat, immediately misses the warmth of her hand under his. But he takes a deep breath and hunkers down beside her, legs hanging over the edge of his bed and their shoulders pressed together. “Do I need to say something sappy? Tell you that you’re my best friend, all that shit?”

He feels, more than hears, her laughter. It’s like things settle, like the air’s clear enough to breathe again. “No,” she says. “You don’t have to say anything sappy.”

“Great. Skipping right over that then: it’s my turn to pick the movie.”

“Oh my _god,_ Jeff. We’ve watched that fucking robot movie like fifty times already.”

“Sorry, Shepard. I watched biotiball with you, you gotta watch robots and shit with me.”

Her head _thunks_ against the wall in defeat and she groans and it occurs to Jeff—although he elects to ignore it—that this is exactly the kind of thing he never thought he’d want the chance to get used to.

\---

The thing is, Shepard knows she’s supposed to belong here; she just doesn’t feel it. For a while, she watches the other biotics from the doorway—it’s not like they’re leagues ahead of her, not like they’re all that different. She’s not sure what she was expecting. Her brother—Tully—he’d been a damned wonder with his biotics and he’d never even made it to seven, let alone gotten a stupid implant. 

She takes a deep breath and makes her way into the gym, finds a spot near the far corner where she can warm up, hopefully without having to socialize. It’s not like people make a point of speaking to her anywhere else on campus; why should this be different?

While she does some warm-up stretches, she watches. There are more biotics than she’d expected, but still not that many. It makes her feel sort of stupid—being so anxious when this isn’t even a crowd. Hell, it can barely be called a “class.” Maybe ten, eleven people. She wonders what Vida would be saying about all this. “Get out of your comfort zone,” probably. “Go make some new friends,” probably. So far as she knew at the time, she had exactly one thing in common with Jeff when she walked up to him in the library that night, and that worked out. So far as she knows now, she’s got at least one thing in common with every person in this room, so it should be just as easy, but it isn’t. Maybe because she’s still scared or maybe because she’s still shy or maybe because she’s just being stubborn but the truth is that she doesn’t care why. She just doesn’t want to do it.

The trainer apparently calls them up to the front but Shepard doesn’t quite register it. A girl—a very pretty girl, Shepard notes—walks past her, taps her on the arm and tips her head toward the class gathering by the door and Shepard follows, silently. There’s no real roll call, they just get counted off and then led through a couple barrier drills. Shepard follows the motions, but she doesn’t dare make an actual barrier. She knows the trainer notices, but he doesn’t say anything. Yet.

In a way, it’s not nearly as stressful as working with Dr. Vida; with Vida, Shepard couldn’t disappear into the background. But in a way, it’s worse because now she’s avoiding the gaze of about twelve other people rather than only one.

Soon enough, they’re sent off to work by themselves—in pairs, teams, whatever, the trainer doesn’t seem to care. Shepard goes back to her corner and stands there for a minute, staring at a ball on the floor. Everyone else is far enough away; everything should be ok. Probably. Right? She moves her arms, ready and willing herself to try out some of the moves she’d seen during that stupid biotiball game. She’s not completely sure how they were doing some of it but it doesn’t really matter because she can’t. She can’t do anything. Or maybe she can and she just isn’t. It’s hard to tell.

“Hey, uh, Shepard? You need some help?” Something about that voice is familiar in a prickly sort of way and she remembers it before she actually turns around. Ben.

“No thanks,” she says, still facing the wall and the ball that’s not moved even an inch from where it was to begin with. She tries to ignore how tense her shoulders are getting; she doesn’t want him to notice.

He doesn’t leave, opting instead to pull a ball from the bin and toss it next to hers where he keeps it in the air with... something. She hasn’t seen anything like that before. “Right. Uh, look, I dunno what Moreau’s told you about me—”

She keeps her eye on her ball, flexes the muscles in her hands and forearms, just willing herself to make _something_ happen ( _don’t, don’t, don’t_ ) but there’s nothing. She doesn’t want him getting any ideas; she wants him to know that she can do this, that she’s just as good as he is, but she just cannot make herself move that stupid ball. “What he might’ve told me doesn’t matter. You pushed him into a table.”

“Not hard. I wasn’t—”

“You could have seriously hurt him!” He doesn’t even sound sorry! Secretly, she’d been glad—proud, even—when Jeff had hit the asshole. Unlike her daddy, her mama never bought into that “kill ‘em with kindness” shit and neither does Shepard. Fucking raiders certainly didn’t kill her people with _kindness_. She’s real tempted to sling one of these stupid balls into Ben’s face. She’ll do it with her hands if her fucking biotics won’t cooperate.

“Close your eyes and try to focus on the way it _feels_ to move your body,” he says, lowering his hands. His... whatever kind of field that is stays in place and she pretends not to look. “Try to shape it with your hands in your mind, not in real life. It helps with the ‘mental muscles.’” He shrugs. “Sort of a stupid thing to call them, I guess. But I haven’t heard anything better.”

She still doesn’t answer and, just to be spiteful, she begins to move and gesture even more deliberately, not that it amounts to anything. She knows he’s right, that it makes more sense, tactically, not to give herself away by practically announcing her intentions to a potential opponent, but at the moment she doesn’t care.

He knows what she’s doing ( _have to be an idiot not to,_ she thinks) and he only sighs. “People really like you, you know.”

It’s unexpected and she comes up short, her hands dropping to her sides. It’s embarrassing, but even worse is the expression on his face because he doesn’t even look _smug,_ just fucking... normal. Like this is a normal conversation between two people, like he’s just giving her some tips, like she might have any genuine interest in speaking to him.

He picks her ball up and holds it out to her—not close enough that she can take it without stepping forward, though. “Except they don’t,” she says, propping her hands on her hips. “Because they’ve certainly never spoken to me. So how would they know if they like me or not?”

“Trust me, Shepard. People like you; they’re just too scared to talk to you.” When she narrows her eyes, he just grins and goes on. “I’m just saying, you don’t _have_ to hang out with him if he’s—look. When me and Moreau lived together, he was an asshole. And I bet every credit I’ve got that he’s been an ass about your biotics, hasn’t he? Even if he _was_ being nice to you before.”

Sure, she remembers all the shit he said about it: entitled assholes who whine about how hard their lives are. Jerks who like to show-off in the same breath that they take disability checks from the Alliance. The guy who shoved him into a fucking pool table. Her favourite was “glitched out energy grenades.”  She couldn’t really argue with that one. The fact that she’s heard rumours about brain camps, or that biotics are always tired and hungry and restless, or that she had a chip shoved into her brain against her will, or what she did to that little girl—Jeff doesn’t seem to really think about those things. But she also reminds herself that he wouldn’t have said any of that shit if she hadn’t been lying to him in the first place. Of course, that’s not exactly a good thing; just because he’d have been playing nice doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have been—wouldn’t still be—thinking those kinds of things about her just the same way he thinks them about everybody else in this room.

Despite all that, she’s more interested in “before,” in how he knew there was a _before_ and what else he knows. In _who_ else knows. But she’s not going to ask. She takes a step forward. Then another. Then three more ‘til she’s walked right past him and pulled another ball from the bin.

Ben can go fuck himself.

“He ever tell you what a jackass he was to me? He ever tell you that? Honestly I don’t know how the hell you’ve put up with him. Because I _tried_ being nice to the guy. All semester.”

She turns away and drops her ball onto the floor, shifting her hands back into position and willing it to stop rolling. It doesn’t. “Like you’re being nice now?”

“Shepard, I’m just trying to—”

“To be nice. I got that. Please go be nice over there.”

He huffs and even though he hasn’t gotten rude or angry, the sound of it makes her tense up again. She doesn’t want his tips, doesn’t want to chat, doesn’t want to make friends. Ben and Dr. Vida both can take their “socializing” and shove it.

“Ok, then,” he says, and it _infuriates_ her how he’s still speaking so calmly, like it’s still a civil conversation. “But if you decide you need some help with trying out some gravity tricks, I’ll be around.”

\---

His mother is so ridiculously pleased with this entire thing that he actually almost regrets it.

“Jeff, is your friend a vegetarian? Because you know there’s this little vegan-friendly store a quick walk from my office and—”

“Oh, I forgot to ask last time, but does your friend have any allergies? Do I need to pick up some special pillowcases or anything?”

“One other thing: has she ever been to the station before? We might need to have her registered. Do you know her birthday and ID numbers? I could go ahead and—”

“Don’t talk to your mother like that, Jeff. This is the last thing, I promise. I just need to know what size shirt she wears.”

“Ok this one’s important: does she like the kinds of movies you and I like? Or does she like the kinds of movies your dad likes?”

He’s stopped replying to her emails. (“Why aren’t you answering, Jeff? I need to know if she doesn’t like peanuts.”) He figures he’ll wait ‘til she’s run out of one-more-thing’s and then just write her a fucking essay about Shepard’s eating preferences and sleeping habits and favourite colors and whatever the hell else it is that his mom needs to know so badly.

He’d thought he’d covered the basics pretty well:

Don’t ask her about Mindoir. (“Jeff. Don’t be ridiculous. I’d never.”)

Just call her Shepard. (“Her surname?” “Her family’s name.”)

Don’t try to introduce her to every friend you have on the station. (“Is that for her sake or for yours? You know you could really stand to be a bit more social, Jeff.”)

Please don’t tell embarrassing stories. (“Oh, can’t I at least tell her that _one_? When you were little and you thought the feeding oats were people food—” “No, Mom.”)

But apparently he’s left out tons of important details, like if Shepard has a preference for brands of soap or if she’d rather the guest room in his mom’s apartments have blinds or curtains on the windows.

In response to most of her outrageous questions, he’s said “I don’t know.” Usually he’s said it while rolling his eyes, typed it in all caps, underlined and bolded. What he doesn’t tell his mom is that he does know plenty of other things. He knows she can’t sleep through an entire night even in a room she’s slept in for months and he worries about her trying to sleep alone on the station, even if he will be right down the hall, much closer than he is here on campus. And he knows she’ll probably stuff that bottle of cinnamon into her bag, right next to her clothes, and he hopes the sterile smell of space station metal and cleaner and office-space doesn’t cover the warm smell of cider, of her family’s farm, of her. And he knows that she’ll still be wearing her hair down to cover the scar on the back of her neck, even after the bruises are gone and the stitches come out and that he’ll be thinking of them like they’re still there just like he’s doing now. And he knows she’s gonna be anxious, that there are probably gonna be lots of times when she wants to lean toward him and whisper “can I hold your hand” or “can we take a break” or “can we go somewhere quieter” but that she won’t actually do it even half as often as she’ll need to.

He knows she’s his best friend, even if he is shit at saying garbage like that. And he knows he needs her. It’s so just goddamn weird knowing that Shepard needs him too. He knows—about Shepard, because of Shepard, something like that—that between the two of them, he’s not the only broken person. And he knows that neither of them are really broken at all, not the way people think.

It’s nice. It’s... there’s just something to it.

But that ain’t the kinda shit he’d tell his mom in an email. Ain’t the kinda shit he’d tell his mom _at all_ when she’s the sort of mom that is absolutely, one hundred percent, definitely going to tell Shepard at least one embarrassing story about him whether he likes it or not.

There’s a knock on his door at the same time there’s a little _ding_ from his datapad.

“Come in, Shepard.”

The door creaks. “How’d you know it was me?”

He snorts and opens his mom’s latest email. “You spend more time in here than my roommate does.”

_Jeff, I had a great idea! We should all go to the zoo before we go back to the station!_

God, he can picture it. Matching t-shirts probably. His mother refusing to go anywhere near the reptile house and insisting they stop at every single zebra-stripe themed photo-booth in the park. Spending forty minutes watching otters and listening to her making that... _sound_ she makes. He’d have to wear the leg braces—as much as he hates the goddamn things, there’s no way he’d be able to walk around a place like that all day without them. He rolls his eyes and feels the bed sink as Shepard climbs up next to him. He shifts the datapad away from her and hopes she doesn’t notice.

She doesn’t.

“I hate gym and I haven’t finished my flight history paper and I think I’m gonna fail my physics exam.”

He should ask her. He should just say it. He should just say _Shepard, do you want to spend the summer with me?_ He can just say it. It’s just words. “So, what I’m hearing is that we should spend tonight studying and _not_ playing platformers.”

“That is _not_ what you’re hearing. I want videogames! I also want potato chips and I know you have some in here.”

“Sounds great,” he says, reaching over to his desk and grabbing his physics book, so conveniently within reach. “Studying it is.”

She whines. “No...”

He can just _say it._ He can just say _I don’t want you to be here alone again._ But she might not be. Right? For three whole months? The Academy or the Alliance or whatever— _somebody’s_ got to have made arrangements, right? So of course, she won’t be alone and it’d be a dick move for him to assume she would, right? But the thought has been nagging at him for days—imagining her all alone in her stupid, boring bedroom over Spring Break. Her implant, his stupid remarks, her family, all that shit in her head and she was by herself and all he has to do is _ask her_. “You can have potato chips if you get 60% on a practice test.”

“Why do you have to be so... responsible and disciplined and—”

“Those sound like compliments to me.”

“—And obnoxious.”

Jeff understands loneliness. And he understands not being willing—not being able—to ask somebody to fill that empty space. So maybe that’s why it’s so hard for him to do it, even now—not just because of her but because of himself too. Goddamn, he’s not in the mood for introspection.

“Come on, I’ll start you with a super easy one: Newton’s Laws of Motion?”

“You have the right to remain silent, the right to an attorney, and the right to plead the fifth.”

“Funny.”

About an hour later, when she’s looking completely fucking miserable, he decides to take pity on her: he switches things up and makes her write the outline for her history paper.

“I thought you _wanted_ to be a pilot,” he says, watching her grumble her way through a bullet point list. He’s busying himself with a little studying of his own, but honestly, it’s just a ruse so he can keep an eye on her. He’s been studying for his finals for weeks. He’s fine.

“I do,” she says. “But the book work isn’t the fun part.”

“It’s not all just flying, you know.”

“God, you sound like Hauser. Stop.”

“I’m just saying, most of what we’re learning is actually important and—”

She looks up sharply, challenge in her face. “I bet you that I can dismantle and reassemble any prototype in the exhibition hall faster than you can.”

He snorts. “Ok, well first of all, we can’t take those apart. It’s an exhibition hall, not a damn Legoland.”

“Sounds like an excuse to me.”

“And _second_ of all, in your dreams.”

Her grin only grows and she drops her pen, outline completely forgotten. “Done.”

“Done? Shepard, we _can’t get in there._ ”

“I’ll worry about that.”

Ok, now he’s starting to get a little nervous. It’s not that he particularly cares about the rules because they’re rules, but he had a hell of a time getting here and he’s not getting kicked out just because Shepard isn’t taking this seriously. “Just worry about your outline.”


End file.
